Jay is a guy born and raised in New York, where he leads an interesting life even in its normality. It is suddenly overwhelmed by a series of events and unexpected encounters that will completely change the way he lived. Incidents and circumstances that seem random will reveal part of a preconceived plan by his guardian angels.

When hyper-intelligent mathematician David is forced to confront his own mortality, his coveted manuscript on the ‘Proof of absence paradox’ threatens to die with him. Desperate to salvage his life’s work, he realizes that his exceptional mentee and protégé, Naila, could hold the key to the salvation of his manuscript and theorem—but their strained relationship may not allow for that.

Invaders of Venustas is an action-packed, thought-provoking short story. It tells of a time when Lemuria, a lost continent in the Pacific, was powerful. Its Central City was the hub of the empire that the tall white beings, a spiritual group from another universe, had created and inhabited with the many extraterrestrial transplants they brought to Earth.

She sat across the table from me as my heart pounded in my chest. The half-eaten meal sat between us, forgotten, and the candle burned low. Our hands were joined (hers felt like fire on a cold night, like a hug in an icy wind) and she looked into my eyes. That’s when she asked me, without saying a word. That’s when she told me she wanted us to be forever.

The Mound Builders is a story about a team of human ambassadors who were sent to the city of the mound builders because a group of power greedy renegades had taken over as rulers and were creating havoc for their own gain. Join Anna and Lucas as they complete their assignment in an attempt to prevent this city of over 300,000 residents from decaying from within as so many civilizations have.

A strange, old woman appears at a secluded monastery in Wyoming with a message for the man in charge, Bishop Kallistos Stavros. This self-professed oracle tells him that God told her to warn him of a great fireball falling from the sky... onto his monastery! She warns of Satan coming in disguise. Things are not as they seem.

Each day we find ourselves in a state of imbalance in a world of impermanence, These new traditional Buddhist-inspired stories talk about various ways to right ourselves when there is no ground under us.

A short story of 3,800 words. It begins: "I awoke from a dreamless sleep lying in the field of stones. I had no idea how I got there, but I had always been there, and there was never a time when I was not there."

In Kyoto, a modern-day businessman and a despairing samurai are separated by centuries – but joined by ancestry and a mutual watershed moment…
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Erik Boman is a writer from Oxford. He is the author of "Short Cuts" and was awarded the A.M. Heath literary prize in 2011.

This is a very short, fun interlude in the Hiding Behind The Couch series. Unlike the rest of the series, which is written in third-person (semi-omniscient) past tense, this short story is written in first-person present tense. It has no real bearing on anything else that happens in the series; it is what it is: an Easter Egg.

When hyper-intelligent mathematician David is forced to confront his own mortality, his coveted manuscript on the ‘Proof of absence paradox’ threatens to die with him. Desperate to salvage his life’s work, he realizes that his exceptional mentee and protégé, Naila, could hold the key to the salvation of his manuscript and theorem—but their strained relationship may not allow for that.

A short story told by David. Locked within his own body, he sees, hears and feels everything, especially pain. Utterly alone, he is assumed to be brain damaged beyond hope. That is until Michael comes- a very different kind of nurse.

Before the beginning, God was lonely.
Finally the true tale of the life of God is told. From before the Big Bang through vaguely intelligent design to the present day and onto a rather bleak future The Concise Re-Telling of the Life of God documents the lonely misunderstood life of our all-seeing Lord and how She overcome her inauspicious beginnings and journeyed towards a happy-ish ending.

We all crave a home but many people settle for a house without understanding there is a difference. One woman strives to change that for any and all who choose to rent one of her rooms. This is s short story about the unknown impacts people can have on your life.